Talk:Sun Microsystems
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[edit] Second Paragraph
Sun is THE leading contributor of [sic] open source software (emphasis mine)? this is rubbish, and reads as though it was written by somebody from Sun marketing. It's akin to Bill Gates' claiming that Windows Vista is the most secure operating system ever produced - pure hype, and demonstrably false. I'm not a hardcore Wikipedian, so i won't dare to make the change, but i humbly ask that one of you more experienced editors axe this bit of hyperbole in the correct way - thanks.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pgilman (talk • contribs) 02:27, 27 February 2007 (UTC).
- A) you're not supposed to be humble -- you're supposed to be bold. And, of course, you're not supposed to be so humble that you don't sign your comments on talk pages. (Btw, please add new comments to the bottom of talk pages, not the top.)
- B) There's actually a reference later in the article to back up "leading contributor" -- (I wasn't the one who put it in the article originally, although I did reformat the section it was in at one point.) There was no pointer to that ref in the intro paragraph, but I went ahead and added that now. Does that address your concern?--NapoliRoma 15:13, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Acquisitions
Cool list -- I'd actually been thinking of a couple of early Sun acquisitions recently, and even wanted to create some separate articles, but haven't had the time to do the necessary research.
A list of several missing ones that I don't have dates for:
- Transept (or "Transcept") DONE (Trancept) -- graphics accelerator hardware company, back in the '80s. I may have the name wrong.
- Sitka Systems DONE (Centram Systems West) -- early network interoperability company. Created TOPS, the Transcendental Operating System, which was really internetworking software among UNIX, IBM and Macs.
- Chorus DONE
- NetDynamics DONE
- iPlanet DONE (i-Planet)
- Gridware DONE
- Aduva DONE
I believe Sun also acquired material assets from Encore, Thinking Machines, and of course Netscape. I'm not sure if those count as "acquisitions" for the purpose of this list.
Some Sun press release mining would turn up some others pretty quickly.
I'm not sure I'd put this at the top of the article, though. It's not the first thing I'd want to read if I were looking up a company in an encyclopedia. In fact, this might suggest that the whole History section be moved further down.--NapoliRoma 20:37, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
- Application server company NetDynamics acquisition was announced in July 1998 [1]. I will see if I can find the date the deal was completed. --Cheesy Mike 21:56, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
- I finally got around to researching and adding several of the above, so I marked those as "DONE", including Cheesy Mike's NetDynamics addition. I also noted the actual company name where appropriate.--NapoliRoma 23:54, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
- Wherever possible we should use references other than Sun press releases. e.g. I used news.com and internetnews.com for the Gridware and Cobalt references.--Cheesy Mike 09:20, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] JavaSoft
Who's JavaSoft? --Abdull 08:47, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
- This article does need to mention it. According to http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/J/JavaSoft.htm and http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/1996-05/sunflash.960529.11819.xml javasoft is "The business unit of Sun Microsystems that is responsible for Java technology." Mathiastck (talk) 23:01, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
- It especially needs to be mentioned since Javasoft redirects here. Mathiastck (talk) 23:02, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
- That is, JavaSoft was "the business unit of Sun..." -- back in 1996, when that press release came out. But yeah, there should be some mention of JavaSoft and SunSoft (another retired Sun business unit name, essentially the predecessor to JavaSoft), at the very least.
- I've toyed with adding a section on "The Planets" (Sun's reorganization into separate opcos back in 1991) but haven't gotten very far yet. As far as I can see, SunSoft and JavaSoft are the most noteworthy of the various incarnations, with the possible exception of the Sun-Netscape Alliance, which already has its own article.--NapoliRoma (talk) 00:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Cobalt Aquisiton
This information needs a rewrite or help. I will add to this section with cites. I was there but need references to point to. Let me know if you like it. --Akc9000 19:37, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Split acquisitions?
Getting quite long now. Should this be split off to a sub-article to allow for more useful expansion? Chris Cunningham 12:58, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Future Products
Does anyone have info to share about Sun future products? How about collaborating on filling in the chart below. Westwind273 20:43, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
| Product | Availability | Architecture | Comments, Config Details |
| Fire 8000 P | SPARC, Opteron | 14U rack-mounted chassis that allows Sun to stack three blade chasses in a single rack; the 8000 series chassis, which was launched in the summer, was a 19U box, which meant it could only fit two in a rack with a little room to spare. More info at http://www.itjungle.com/tug/tug111606-story07.html | |
| Galaxy Xeon Rack (Sun Blade 6000) | Jun-07 | Xeon | Sun should pump out the two-socket Xeon-based server in CY07Q2 and will use Intel's current four-core chip in the system. This appears to be Clovertown. The entry-level pricing for the Sun Blade 6000 Chassis is $4,995; the Sun Blade T6300, $5,995; the Sun Blade X6250, $3,695; and the Sun Blade X6220, $3,995. |
| Wolf (Sun Blade 6220) | Jun-07 | Xeon | In June 2007, Sun should release a system code-named Wolf that is a four-socket Xeon-based box. That four-socket system will slot into Sun's existing chassis. |
| Sun Blade X6250 | Jun-07 | Xeon | A two-socket blade that offers a quad-core Xeon processor. |
| Galaxy Xeon Blade (Scorpio) | CY07H2 (Q3?) | UltraSPARC T1 (Niagara) and Xeon | Galaxy is Sun's line of x86 servers. The four-socket blade server will fit into Sun's existing Blade 8000 chassis and should ship in the second half of this year. The system will be based on the four-core "Tigerton" version of Xeon from Intel and will support up to 128GB of memory. http://blogs.sun.com/syw/entry/intel_and_sun_a_dynamic |
| Constellation | CY07H2 | Opteron (Barcelona) | Sun Blade 6000 servers configured with thousands of Sun UltraSPARC TI, AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon processors; capable of holding up to 48 blades per rack. Low latency, high bandwidth interconnect with a high-density, 3456-port InfiniBand switch. U of Texas Austin's TACC is the first system. |
| Supernova servers | 2008 | SPARC | Servers that use the Rock processor. Supernova machines based on the Rock Sparc variant are expected to deliver more than 10 times the performance of the APL machine and about 16 times of that of the current UltraSparc-IV+ machines using the 1.8 GHz processors. The Supernova systems will have the networking capabilities of Niagara but will also have improved single-thread and floating-point performance |
[edit] Headquarters
Why does it say "Menlo Park" in the right box and "Santa Clara" in first paragraph? 67.180.29.122 05:30, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Second Paragraph
Well I read the cited source and found this particular interesting explanation concerning Sun being a "leading proponent of open source".
"Sun alone, in particular, is credited with 30% of the total code contribution in our sample, which highlights one of the flaws inherent in the technique used for identifying company code contribution, which is based on copyright credits42. In the case of Sun, most of its contribution is accounted for by OpenOffice, for which Sun holds the copyright. The entire codebase of OpenOffice is not, in fact, Sun’s sole creation, but contributors – individuals and other firms, small and big – sign an agreement assigning Sun joint copyright of their contributions, in order to simplify licensing and liability management"
I think the second paragraph as it stands is misleading as it seems to give the impression Sun do more than the article cited in support of the notion suggests. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.129.228.85 (talk) 00:09, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
- I replaced the source. Better?--NapoliRoma 17:50, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 14:11, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Acquisitions
This page from Sun's website http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/investor/sun_facts/merger_history.jsp
has the following list, wich does not exactly match what wikipedia has. Can someone figure it out?
Acquisitions History
Date Acquisition
October 2007 Cluster File Systems, Inc.
May 2007 SavaJe Technologies
October 2006 Neogent
March 2006 Aduva
August 2005 StorageTek
August 2005 SeeBeyond Technology Corporation
July 2005 Tarantella, Inc.
June 2005 Procom Technology, Inc.'s NAS IP Assets
January 2005 Sevenspace, Inc.
April 2004 Kealia, Inc.
January 2004 Nauticus
December 2003 Waveset Technologies, Inc.
August 2003 CenterRun, Inc.
July 2003 Pixo, Inc.
November 2002 Pirus Networks
November 2002 Terraspring
July 2002 Afara Websystems, Inc.
February 2002 Clustra Systems, Inc.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Pietnoll (talk • contribs) 08:23, January 23, 2008
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"the following list [...] does not exactly match what wikipedia has. Can someone figure it out?"
- Ooh, that's easy: this one's backwards! What do I win?--NapoliRoma (talk) 19:59, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
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- Pedant of the week maybe? :-) I think the Sun list is not exhaustive and only lists acquisitions that Sun considers to be noteworthy. Many of the acquisitions in the article are cited with sources other than Sun's press releases so it is right that they are listed here. --TimTay (talk) 21:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
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- Pedant of the week? I'll take it!
- More than anything, I was amused/slightly annoyed that this was dumped in without any comment as to what the contributor's concerns actually were. Looking at this more carefully (because I am a pedant), and ignoring the obvious fact that Sun's list only goes back to 2002, I see that some of the dates differ by a few months, which I assume has to do with one source picking the date of announcement and the other picking the closing date (and which does what is not consistent). There's also at least one on the Sun list that isn't in the article yet (CenterRun).--NapoliRoma (talk) 01:29, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks for having brains in addition to wit. As you may guess, not all people are crazy wikipeddicts. I was just trying to be a bit helpful, reading all this fuss about reliability of wikipedia. So in the ruture instead of being annoyed just leave it for people who will have fun. As for being pedantic, your remark of picking dates must be actually translated into updating the article with explanations of dates (closure vs. announcement), so that this issue will not arise in the future. I am pretty sure some well-meaning occasional editors may start changing the dates back and forth. (But then again it is part of fun here, I guess :- ) Pietnoll (talk) 03:29, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
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[edit] WARNING: NEW WARNING
There is a new note at the top of the Java programming language page saying that they might mean Sun Microsystems (ticker symbol JAVA) when they go to the Java article. Perhaps it would be helpful to add a link back to Java in THIS article. -deadly7, MESS WITH THE BEST, DIE LIKE THE REST!—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.12.169.74 (talk) 02:51, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
- No, wouldn't be necessary. The putative reason for the note at the top of the Java programming language page is to help someone who typed the stock ticker symbol and wanted to find out which company is associated with it. In the case where someone comes to the Sun page to learn more about Java, there are already a bunch of Java-related links to help them out. Having another as a note at the top of the page would be overkill, and no more appropriate than having one for every other Sun technology or product -- and there's even a template at the foot of the page that covers that.
- I'd also say (and will follow up with an edit) that the note at the top of the Java (programming language) page is pointless, since you will not have gotten to that page by typing the bare word "Java." Meanwhile, if you do type in "JAVA", you'll get to the Java dab page, and if you type in "Java" or "java", you'll get to the island page, which has a note pointing you to the dab page. All bases seem to be covered.
- (About signatures: the important element isn't your handle or motto, it's a trackback to your account or IP, and timestamp. The easiest way to sign an article is type "~~~~" or click on the "your signature" button above the edit window.)
- Cheers, NapoliRoma (talk) 03:19, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
- I AGREE WITH NEPALESEROMAN. LISTEN, THE LINKS ARE THERE. IF PEOPLE WANT TO VISIT THEM THEY CAN TYPE IT. ALSO I FIND YOUR WORK ON THE SIGNATURES TO BE INTRIGUING. -deadly69, death with each breath —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.12.170.204 (talk) 07:47, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Hello, its Mario!
Hello guys! Its me, mario! I just want to say that your site is amazing! Good luck! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.124.101.25 (talk) 00:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Bill Joy was not one of the original founders of Sun
I have just made a very controversial change about the founders of Sun. While Bill Joy is always listed as one of the original founders in truth he is not. If you read the reference VINOD KHOSLA AND SUN MICROSYSTEMS, Amar Bhide, Harvard Business School, 12/14/89 you will see that he was not. A copy can be found at: http://web.archive.org/web/20001004122402/http://www.stanford.edu/group/mmdd/SiliconValley/Bhide/KhoslaAndSUNMicrosystems.html While Bill Joy was consulted and courted during the very early days of the company, he did not agree to join for a while. He was not even in the first 10 employees of Sun. I know this from my time at Sun (employee #318) and looking in the password file. Your UNIX user ID was your employee number plus a thousand.
Robert.harker (talk) 04:42, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
- Andy B. talks about this here, saying, "I think his official badge number was 6 because there were two people we hired on day one, and he came [onboard approximately] the next week." The article about Khosla you reference above describes him as the third critical guy Khosla wanted on board, after Andy and McNealy.--NapoliRoma (talk) 06:14, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
